


i and yours and ours

by redluxite (wordstruck)



Series: VLD One-Shots [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and minor angst, M/M, No Spoilers for S4, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Pre-Kerberos Mission, post-s4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-07 15:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite
Summary: Keith is the fourth person outside of Garrison command to learn that Shiro has been picked for the Kerberos mission.Shiro tells him in quiet words and breathes, just the two of them in his quarters.Keith looks at Shiro and thinks: there are no such things as fixed points in space. 4.67 billion miles is not a constant. Time and distance change many things.Keith thinks,if anyone deserves to pilot an exploration to the deepest part of space that humans have ever reached, it’s you.Or, a short pre-Kerberos one-shot.





	1. i am and you are

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and written for [Maiky](twitter.com/sun_god_rising). Shares the same story universe as [all roads lead home to you](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12727734), but can be read as a stand-alone.

* * *

 

 

These are the things Shiro associates with Keith--

The dumpster behind the convenience store in town, where they’d first met. Hoverbikes and illegal races. The desert dust in the sunset. A corner of the library, by the more obscure astrology references, near the shoddy air-conditioner. Burger nights at the Garrison. Boots and fingerless gloves. A red string.

And some things intangible, like the way warmth blooms in his chest when he sees Keith’s smile. The way his heart feels too big for his chest when he turns and sees Keith looking up at the sky, at the stars, and the worlds and galaxies he knows are out there. The way Keith says his name, like rainfall.

 

These are the things Keith has learned since meeting Shiro--

Sparring like you’re in a scrappy, back-alley fight only gets you so far. Burning yourself out to reach your goal is never worth it. You can find happy things in small moments. Walls are meant to be let down for people. Pluto and Kerberos are 4.67 billion miles from Earth. At their coldest, they get to minus-233° Celsius.

Home can be a person, a steadiness and certainty and strength.

Shiro keeps his promises.

 

Keith is the fourth person outside of Garrison command to learn that Shiro has been picked for the Kerberos mission.

Shiro tells him in quiet words and breathes, just the two of them in his quarters.

Keith looks at Shiro and thinks: there are no such things as fixed points in space. 4.67 billion miles is not a constant. Time and distance change many things.

Keith thinks, _if anyone deserves to pilot an exploration to the deepest part of space that humans have ever reached, it’s you._

“Do you think you can bring me home a space rock?” he says. Shiro’s eyes crinkle, soft.

“I’m sure Dr. Holt wouldn’t mind,” Shiro admits, and they both laugh.

 

There are no such things as fixed points in space, but Shiro has always been an exception for Keith in everything.

 

The shack is their little hideaway, salvaged and done-up over months and plenty of elbow grease. They store Shiro’s snacks and books there, the secondhand hoverbike that Keith’s been fixing up. Tiny things migrate over the weeks: notebooks, clothes, mementos. The polaroid that Matt had taken one weekend, Keith with whipped cream on his nose and Shiro laughing.

Matt will be on the Kerberos mission with Shiro. Keith simultaneously resents him and is terribly grateful.

(It’s not the first time Keith stings over the distance in age, in experience. Catching up to Shiro is like running after a comet, no matter that Shiro keeps telling him that he’ll be someone even better.

Still, Keith has never minded sharing Shiro’s light.)

One week before the mission and they sneak out there, take Shiro’s Garrison-issue hoverbike to the nearby ridge and hike the rest of the way. The desert sky opens wide over them, constellations and dark spaces.

Keith touches the back of his hand to Shiro’s as they walk.

Shiro laces their fingers together and smiles.

 

“I’m a little jealous,” Keith admits, when they’re sitting inside the shack, mug of hot chocolate on the floor beside him.

“Of Matt?” Shiro asks, blowing at his tea to cool it.

“Of you.” Keith picks up his mug, lets the heat seep into his palm. Desert nights are cold, and while their tiny space heater does a brave job, extra sources of warmth are always welcome.

Shiro blinks. “Me?”

Keith laughs, sets his mug down again. “You get to go out there, don’t you? First men on Kerberos, first men past the Jupiter belt. Pushing the reaches of space exploration.” He looks down at his drink, at the ground, solid under his legs. “It’s what we all dream of.”

Shiro looks at Keith for a long moment, then chuckles under his breath. “There’ll be other firsts, you know.” He smiles around the rim of his mug as he takes a sip. “You could be the first to break past the boundaries of the Milky Way. First to orbit around the Sun.”

“First to receive sixteen straight disciplinary citations in the cadet course,” Keith mutters under his breath, which just makes Shiro laugh louder.

“First to break the Venus orbit flight record on the simulator,” he counters.

“First to break _all_ your records on the simulator,” Keith points out with a grin.

“True.” Shiro takes another long sip of tea, eyeing Keith through the steam. Remembers a scrappy kid in the alleyway changing out of dust-covered clothes and back into a Garrison uniform. An intensity that Keith doesn’t always know how to direct and control. Red spotted high on Keith’s cheeks after their sparring sessions.

There are no fixed points in space, but knowing where Keith will be while he’s gone is a reassurance. Leaving is made both easy and painful by having something to come back to.

“First person I fell in love with,” Shiro says lightly. Keith doesn’t look up. The night around them is quiet.

Then Keith sets down his mug and crawls over to Shiro, pushes his face against the older boy’s shoulder. Shiro puts down his own drink and pulls Keith into his lap, leans back against the wall.

“You’re going to be so far away,” Keith says, and he sounds so small.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is made up of many small things and moments, packed to overflowing in a box.)

Shiro doesn’t have anything to say that could refute that. Instead, impulsively, he shifts Keith back a little and reaches down. There’s a fraying on the inner hem of Keith’s jacket; Shiro takes one of the red threads and pulls.

“Hey--” Keith starts to protest, but Shiro shushes him.

“Hand,” he says, when he’s pulled the thread free.

“Don’t ruin my jacket,” Keith grumbles, and holds out his left hand for Shiro to take.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is so many small things and moments collected but they will never sum up the way Keith makes Shiro feel, like there are galaxies in his lungs and his heart.)

Shiro pries Keith’s glove off his hand, then sets it aside. He makes Keith hold his hand in midair while he carefully, carefully ties the thin red thread around Keith’s left ring finger.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is many, many things but most of all he is everything.)

“There,” Shiro says casually, and then he pulls Keith’s hand in to kiss his palm. “Now it’s a promise.”

“What--” Keith blushes, ducks his head. Shiro laughs and kisses him.

“You are mine,” he says, and lifts Keith’s hand to his lips again, “and I am yours. So long as my thread is tied to you, I will come back.”

Keith’s hand shakes in Shiro’s grip. He leans forward, burying his face in the crook of Shiro’s shoulder, pressing as close as he can get.

Shiro wraps his arms around Keith, presses his cheek to dark hair.

“You’ll come back,” Keith says, muffled against Shiro’s shirt.

 

(Shiro keeps his promises.)

 


	2. 'til stars show us home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Keith makes to pull his hand back, Shiro stops him with a tug of the thread.
> 
> In response to Keith’s questioning look, he holds his own hand up.
> 
> Says, softly, “it goes both ways.”
> 
> There is red high on Keith’s cheeks. There is an overwhelming feeling in Shiro’s chest. This is the only way he knows how to tell Keith that he is Shiro’s fixed point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't plan on it, but this now has a second chapter after talking with [Kay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleskeletons/) about Shiro and Keith and marriage (promises). Grand space weddings are all well and good but quiet proclamations work better, because theirs is a love louder than words.

* * *

 

 

Keith keeps a short list of facts about the universe at the back of his mind:

  * Kerberos is 4.67 billion miles from Earth
  * at their coldest, Pluto and Kerberos fall to minus-233° Celsius
  * Earth is the third planet in the Milky Way solar system
  * the Sun’s interior reaches 15 million degrees Kelvin
  * there are no such things as fixed points in space



His knowledge of the universe, of course, has rapidly expanded to include things like the fact that there are Balmera, and the Galran empire, and the existence of odd creatures called Bi Boh Bi -- and that’s just a fraction of what they’ve discovered, flying around on a 10,000-year-old Altean castle and fighting off Galra with combat space lions. But when the sheer amount of _universe_ around him threatens to overwhelm him, Keith goes back to these time-worn phrases as a way to keep himself grounded.

(Home, after all, is not something back on Earth.)

The last item on that list is less fact and more theory, though, and Keith thinks it doesn’t always hold. Because in all this chaos, there is where he is, and where Shiro is, and those are both certain and unchanging. Where Shiro goes, Keith will find him.

 

(Where Keith is, Shiro will return.)

 

Shiro finds him in one of the rooms in the castle, huge windows and the horizon of space outside. Time is difficult out in space, but all the other Paladins and Coran are probably asleep, so it passes for the middle of the night. Neither of them are strangers to being awake at odd hours, with time spent on the training deck or in the library.

Keith doesn’t flinch when the door opens behind him. There’s only one other person who’d know to come here, after all.

“I thought you’d be at the training deck,” Shiro says, coming to sit beside Keith on the floor.

Keith shrugs. “Not in the mood.”

They sit in silence for a moment, looking through the glass at the expanse of galaxy outside. It’s darker than Keith had thought, back at the Garrison; stars are much further apart than they appear from Earth. There’s a planet in the distance, where they’d picked up supplies earlier that day. There’s two moons. There’s five inches of space between his shoulder and Shiro’s.

“Do you ever miss it,” Shiro says lightly.

Keith inhales, exhales, tries to unspool the tension inside him that always seems to have him strung up.

“Not really,” he replies after a moment.

Shiro turns to look at him. “Back then,” he adds, “during our Paladin exercises. The place you were thinking of.”

_(Four walls and a roof. A refrigerator full of Shiro’s snacks. A secondhand red hoverbike. A couch and a patchwork quilt. A tiny space heater. A drawer of photographs and notes. A steadiness and a warmth.)_

Keith thinks of the things he’s left behind, that he likely will never have again. Of the place he’s left behind, the little sanctuary of their own making.

(Of the person beside him, right now, still alive and here and Keith’s personal fixed point.)

“No,” he says, quietly. “Not really.”

Shiro exhales a dry laugh. Looks back out the window. It’s very _Keith,_ that answer, but when Shiro himself thinks back to Earth and everything still there -- everything not waiting for him -- he finds he agrees.

But there is still something he wants to know, so he asks, “did you keep it?”

Keith’s left hand shifts where it lies in his lap. He smiles, thin and faint.

“I did,” he says ( _it’s in the drawer, tied around all the photographs of us, of course I’d keep it)._ “Dunno what’s happened to it now.”

Shiro blinks, mildly surprised. “You did?” It almost makes him laugh. “Huh.”

Keith finally turns to face Shiro, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I?”

There’s a smile threatening at the corners of Shiro’s mouth; there’s a warmth blooming in his lungs and his heart. “I don’t know, I just -- it was just thread.” _(I would have given you something more, if we’d had time, if I’d come back like I was supposed to.)_

Keith’s frown deepens as he pokes Shiro in the shoulder. “It wasn’t _just_ thread,” he huffs. “It was -- it _mattered,_ okay.” There’s a flush creeping over his face.. Shiro wants to run his thumbs over the apples of Keith’s cheeks and see if he can’t make that color deepen. The castle is so quiet around them.

Keith exhales sharply and ducks his head. “When you were gone, it was like -- a reminder, that you were coming back.” He swallows; his shoulders hunch. “Then after, it was like… it kept me hopeful you were still out there.”

_(Home can be a person, a steadiness and certainty and strength. Shiro keeps his promises.)_

There is the space of a heartbeat, and then Shiro smiles, soft and warm; feels something inside threaten to overwhelm him. Looks at Keith and remembers nights spent out in a desert, the dust in the sunset, a corner of the library.

Says, “okay then, here.”

Reaches out, tugs Keith closer, tugs his jacket open and looks for a fraying on the inside hem.

“Do you _have_ to keep doing that,” Keith mutters, and wrinkles his nose when Shiro shushes him.

“Hand,” Shiro says, when he’s pulled the thread free.

The boy sitting across looks at him for a long moment, searching. If there’s a little uncertainty then Shiro doesn’t let it hurt; they’ve both been through more than enough.

Keith looks at him, then at the thread, then holds up his hand.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is so much more now than a collection of associations and memories, less like Shiro’s personal star and more like an entire galaxy, something uncontainable.)

Shiro pries Keith’s glove off, sets it aside. Takes a moment to hold Keith’s hand in his and steady them both.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is unchanged and yet different, so far now from the boy he’d left behind on Earth when he’d gone to Kerberos, but still Shiro feels the same.)

Carefully, carefully, he ties one end of the string around Keith’s left ring finger.

(Keith in Shiro’s mind is many, many things but most of all he is everything.)

When Keith makes to pull his hand back, Shiro stops him with a tug of the thread.

In response to Keith’s questioning look, he holds his own hand up.

Says, softly, “it goes both ways.”

There is red high on Keith’s cheeks. There is an overwhelming feeling in Shiro’s chest. This is the only way he knows how to tell Keith that he is Shiro’s fixed point.

Keith’s fingers shake a little as they take the thread from Shiro. But carefully, so gently, they tie the thread around Shiro’s left ring finger.

When Keith is done, Shiro grins at him. “I am yours, and you are mine,” he says. The thread around his finger is so thin but it holds him in place, grounds him like nothing else has for a long time.

The phrase makes Keith snort, and he shakes his head. “How many times are you going to say that,” he says, half-laughing to cover up his embarrassment.

Shiro leans in, kisses the laugh off his lips, kisses Keith and brings their hands together, thread between their palms.

“As many times as it takes.”

 

(There are no such things as fixed points in space, but here where they are tied together, Keith is and Shiro is, and that is proof enough.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!  
> Come say hi to me on social media -- I'm on Twitter as [@okw_tr](twitter.com/okw_tr) and Tumblr as [yurochkas](yurochkas.tumblr.com). You can also check there for ways to support my writing and for my art. ^u^


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